Grisly murder aboard Greyhound bus in Canada: Decapitation

DecapitationGrisly murder aboard Greyhound bus in Canada

Veröffentlicht am 01.08.2008 | Lesedauer: 4 Minuten

Quelle: AP

A grisly attack occured aboard a Greyhound bus bound for Winnipeg, Manitoba on Wednesday night. A man reportedly attacked the passenger sleeping next to him, calmly stabbing him 40 or 50 times before decapitating him, displaying the head to horrified passengers and disembowelling his victim.

Passengers fled the bus in panic, and police said later their quick evacuation may have kept the killer from turning on others.

A 40-year-old man, who was not identified, was arrested for the murder on the bus, which was traveling overnight Wednesday from Edmonton, Alberta, to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Steve Colwell told a news conference. According to Colwell the man was apprehended when he tried to escape the bus through a broken window. The Canadian Press named the dead man as Tim McLean, 22, of Winnipeg. According to cnn.com , messages of condolence have been pouring in for the young man, who was reportedly on his way home from working at an Alberta fair.

Colwell said they didn't know what prompted the attack and said they had not yet interviewed the suspect as of mid Thursday afternoon. He did not explain the delay.

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Passengers said the attacker did not seem to know the victim and that he wore sunglasses throughout the attack, although it was the middle of the night. Passenger Garnet Caton said the victim was sleeping with headphones on before he was stabbed 40 or 50 times by the man sitting next to him.

"We heard this bloodcurdling scream and turned around, and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly, like 40 or 50 times," Caton said from a hotel in Brandon, Manitoba, where he and other passengers had been taken to rest.Caton said the bus stopped and the passengers scrambled to disembark while the suspect allegedly began methodically carving up the man's body. The attacker severed the man's head with a large hunting knife and held the head up by the door for others to see. "When he was attacking him, he was calm ... like he was at the beach," Caton said. "There was no rage or, or anything. He was just like a robot stabbing the guy." Caton said he saw the suspect had the victim on the floor of the bus and "was cutting his head off and pretty much gutting him."

Caton said that the attacker eventually tried to get off the bus, but that he, the driver and a passing trucker who had stopped to help, threw their weight against the door to prevent the man from leaving. When the attacker appeared to be attempting to start up the bus and drive away, the bus driver went to the rear of the bus and somehow disabled it, Caton said.

Fellow passenger Cody Olmstead said the man "dropped the head and went back and started cutting the body back up."Olmstead said the man later taunted police, who had surrounded the bus, and dropped the head in front of them.

Colwell, the RCMP spokesman, praised the passengers for their behavior. "It's not something that happens regularly on a bus," he said. "You're sitting there enjoying your trip and then all of a sudden somebody gets stabbed. I imagine it would be pretty traumatic ... the way they acted was extraordinary."

Colwell added that "they reacted swiftly, calmly in exiting the bus and, as a result, nobody else was injured."

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day called it a "horrific" incident, but did not discuss details of the attack, saying he did not want to jeopardize the investigation.

"We want to make sure that the process is followed as aggressively as possible, a full legal process, and the perpetrator is definitely dealt with the full force of the law," he said.

Day called it bizarre and extremely rare. "The horrific nature of it is probably one-of-a-kind in Canadian history," he said.

The man responsible for the gruesome attack aboard the Greyhound bus in Canada, and who witnesses say stabbed, disembowled and decapitated his seat mate, appeared in court on Friday. As of yet police have offered no motive for the shocking attack against a 22-year-old carnival worker.

In a turn of events that belong nowhere but perhaps a horror movie, a police officer at the scene of a grisly beheading on a Canadian bus reported seeing the attacker hacking off pieces of the victim's body and eating them.